


spoken like a souvenir

by orsumfenix



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Anger, Canon Compliant, Gen, planning, thoughts, well until next ep that is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-30
Updated: 2017-07-30
Packaged: 2018-12-09 00:11:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11657574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orsumfenix/pseuds/orsumfenix
Summary: Ferdinand leaves. Rachel stays.





	spoken like a souvenir

**Author's Note:**

> title from [Breed](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DgDBJmZmwA) by Snake River Conspiracy bc every time i hear it my heart screams "rachel duncan!!!!!!!!"

After Ferdinand has gone, Rachel stays in the hotel room.

She should leave. Of course she should. Even through the drugs and the haze and the pain she knows this one clear, simple fact: she should leave.

But where would she go?

Instead of lingering on the question she’s been asking since she was six, Rachel forces herself to her feet and – stands. In a few moments she’ll stagger over to the bathroom mirror and try not to hate herself for not being able to walk straight. But for now she stands as still as she can, staring off into space.

Her goal has been reached. Siobhan Sadler has the shadow file and she’s making its contents public. Neolution will be destroyed.

She’ll be free.

“What do I do with that?” Her voice comes out smaller than it was meant to, but there’s no one here and for once she thinks she’ll allow herself this weakness. “What do I do with freedom?”

_I don’t know how to be free,_ lingers on her tongue. Rachel swallows it down and hopes that will make it go away.

She needs a new goal. Something big. Something to move towards, step by step. Something that will make everything that’s happened fall into place, like it was meant to go that way all along.

Something like Westmoreland’s goal. An objective that will make her feel like everything – _everything_ – has happened for a purpose. That _she_ still has a purpose.

Once she is free, she won’t have a purpose. That is, after all, the definition of freedom.

For now Rachel sets a small goal: get to the bathroom mirror. It’s a nice goal. It doesn’t make her heart stop with the largeness, the _impossibility_ of it. It’s manageable. She can do it.

She does.

The mirror reflection isn’t very flattering. The lighting casts a shadow over her face, throwing all her features into ambiguity. It’s fine. She doesn’t need a mirror to know the features she’s poured over her whole life. The curve of her face. The angle of her nose. They’re all recorded in a file somewhere, printed over and over under the names of each different clone.

Her eye meets its reflection, boring straight in.

“You are not exempt from the experiment,” she tells herself, voice as hard as she can make it. “But you have a position of privilege. Use it.”

\--

Rachel uses it like this: she looks at herself as a file.

_Subject 779H41. Current emotions of embarrassment, confusion, satisfaction. Conflicting emotions. Has achieved goal of bringing down Neolution, but no longer knows what to do with itse – with **her** self. Was almost murdered by man she has prided herself over controlling. Had to resort to embarrassing means to survive._

_Special Notes: Small goals of tearing out eye and reaching bathroom mirror have also been reached._

Looking at things this way, it all feels a bit more distant. Like she’s putting things into perspective.

So Rachel settles on what to do in the exact same way she always does. She takes every emotion sitting inside of her, and sharpens them all into anger.

Anger is easy. It’s manageable. Familiar. It’s the only thing that feels _right_.

Well. That and a hollow eye-socket.

\--

There’s so many things that she could try and do. She could get to Helena first, use her as leverage. She could go crawling to Sarah and Siobhan whispering _I helped you, I saved Kira and I gave you what you needed to take down Neolution, I warned you about Ferdinand_ , and they’re so good and shining and moral that they might just help her.

What she chooses to do is to take the bandages covering her eye off. They feel like they’re trying to cover it up, the way Westmoreland’s lie tried to cover her anger and wash it away. But Rachel wants this. She _needs_ this.

She doesn’t want to lock her rage away. She wants to wear it and let everyone see.

Maybe she should just burn everything down. She’s already taken down Brightborn and Revival. It won’t be long before Neolution’s gone, too. She could get rid of Dyad. Topside. Everyone and everything that ever helped to hurt her.

That includes Sarah Manning.

As Rachel packs, the idea that’s taken root in her mind begins to grow. Ferdinand wanted to create a future, but she only wanted to destroy, so that’s what she’ll do. She already knows the names and locations of every clone. Surely it wouldn’t be hard to reach out to the unaware ones, to approach them with a soft façade and the word ‘sister’ on her tongue?

She’ll tell them about the monitors. About what’s been done to them. She’ll tell them that Dyad and Topside tore out her eye and that they’re planning to kill them and everyone they love.

She’s killed clones and she’s helped clones. Now it’s time to use them.

Once she’s finished packing she books a flight to Ireland with shaking fingers. Lisa Glynn has lived there for the last five years, with a monitor and an adopted child. When Rachel turns up she’ll say that they’re sisters, and Lisa Glynn is compassionate. She’ll give her a place to stay. She’ll want to get to know her. Rachel can pretend, for a while, to be kind.

(Lisa Glynn’s parents are dead. There will be no one to dispute Rachel’s claims.)

If she decides to proceed with the plan, she will tell Lisa about the others and watch her face twist. She’ll plant evidence of her monitor’s betrayal. She’ll say that Dyad ripped out her eye in a murder attempt after she uncovered the truth.

And then she’ll go to the others, collecting them one at a time, giving them all pieces of her anger and building a stronger, better version of Sarah’s little club. They’ll help her rip everything apart.

But for now, Rachel sets the small goal of leaving the hotel room. She meets it in thirty seconds.

\--

She’ll start a fucking war, because there’s nothing else to do.

**Author's Note:**

> wud rachel have the money or the ID to get a flight to ireland? probably not but if the show can have plot holes then so can i


End file.
